


six hours

by sheepfulsheepyard



Series: three two one boom [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: (It's Actually Also His Son), Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Darth Vader Gets a Friend, Darth Vader Redemption, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, I mean, It's All For Luke, Kidnapping, Luke Is Having a Tough Time of It, Slavery, Something like that?, Sort Of, Suicidal Thoughts, Tatooine (Star Wars), Vader Threatens To Kill People Every Other Paragraph, also everybody rags on vader's piloting skills, and let's just say, he gets there though, heed the tags, not like dark evil just like real sad, well sorta, which should really be a tag, womp womp it gets dark, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-21 00:17:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17032659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheepfulsheepyard/pseuds/sheepfulsheepyard
Summary: Darth Vader crash-lands on Tatooine, is not allowed to die, and the rest is history.or: It doesn't take much to turn Vader's life around. A few nuts and bolts will do the trick. It takes a lot more for his son.





	1. abrasion

**Author's Note:**

> give me six hours to cut down a tree, and I will spend four sharpening the axe.
> 
> abrasion –– is the process of scuffing, scratching, wearing down, marring, or rubbing away. it can be intentionally imposed in a controlled process using an abrasive. abrasion can be an undesirable effect of exposure to normal use or exposure to the elements.

_CHAPTER ONE_

ABRASION

_is the process of scuffing, scratching, wearing down, marring, or rubbing away. it can be intentionally imposed in a controlled process using an abrasive. abrasion can be an undesirable effect of exposure to normal use or exposure to the elements._

* * *

 Vader hadn’t been back to Tatooine in twenty-three years. All it took was two hyperjumps, an hour of dogfighting, and a lucky shot to send him back, careening towards the sands.

Right before he crashed into the dunes, a bitter thought crossed his mind in his mother’s voice: _what comes from the sands will return to it._

The  _CRUNCH_ was the most gut-wrenching sound he had heard in a long time. A wing caught on the ground with a spray of sparks and sands as the entire pod went tumbling down after, lights and alarms screaming as Vader futilely tried to yank the TIE into submission with the Force. Concentration slipped through his fingers like water as something punctured his armor––at his arm? Chest? Leg? He didn’t know––Before everything went mercifully black, he caught sight of the desertscape, as barren and stark through red lenses as it had been at nine, nineteen.

Not even rage, warring against the drag of sleep, could wash out the acrid, biting sting: he’d die here. Not at Obi-Wan’s hands, not on Mustafar, not even by his master’s grace.

Back on Tatooine.

Vader considering, in his fading moments, another thought: with his mother. Shouldn’t that be enough? Perhaps he should wear a smile on his dying breath…

* * *

 Vader didn’t die.

He knew this, sharply, suddenly, _furiously:_ the cracked red of his ocular receptors was hit with the bleak, brackish light of glow-lamps hanging just out of his vision. The crooked HUD was struggling to compensate for the light; he heard the whine of his respirator struggling, the armor heavily weighing him down on a long, steel table––

––not a medbay. Not the _Devastator,_ the Fortress, or even the cursed Death Star––

Vader blindly seized up with the Force everything he could find; in the back of his mind he felt a surge of relief and grim gratification as something rattled and banged, someone cursed––someone?

“Shit!” he heard the same voice. It came in stretched and buzzing through the damaged receptors. He reached up, and up, the weight of his prosthetic behind it and ready to–– _too slow, too slow,_ Vader thought, panicked gnawing on the edges of his mind, seconds too late––“Stop _moving!”_

Everything went black.

* * *

Vader lived.

He came back around, slowly, this time: slowly enough that he felt the movements of hydrospanners and wrenches deep in the mechanical guts of his control box.

The Force froze the air at Vader’s command. Lucid, this time, as he arched his neck as much as he could to capture the gaze of the intruder. The lamps flickered in the already dark room, the spanner’s whirring froze, finally–– _finally––_ he heard the man’s breath catch as Vader twisted it in his throat.

“I don’t need to move to kill you.”

The vocoder wasn’t damaged. Much. There was an echo at the end, but it got message more than across.

“Funny,” the man rasped out. Despite the slow purpling around his throat, tighter and tighter and tighter, _do you want to know what it feels like not to breathe,_ his hands were steady around his tools. A vein popped in his eye as he drove the spanner like a lance through something in Vader and everything went _white._ “I don’t, either.”

Alarms screamed at him across the HUD as Vader released the man with a roar, who went stumbling back down off the slab, but Vader’s control of the Force abandoned him as feverishly grasped at it like he used to grab his mother’s skirts.

Vader sucked a breath––or tried to––but the respirator relentlessly poured oxygen in. He laid there, stiff and immobile and docile as a kitten, as the man stood up, and Vader could feel his grim satisfaction.

“I’ll kill you for this,” Vader promised.

“Sure,” said the man, flippantly, “but for now, stay put.”

Vader could do nothing, frothing with rage that could only escape in artificial breaths, but watch as the man crouched on the slab next to his prone body. He was _inches_ from Vader’s grip, but something that even the Force could barely touch arrested his every movement from reaching up and snapping his neck.

The man worked diligently at his control box, but didn’t touch––wisely, Vader thought sourly––whatever had debilitated him. It was maybe minutes, maybe hours, but soon the white echoes of pain faded from his gaze and the HUD calmed. Vader could make him out more clearly even in the low light.

He was young, the mechanic, Vader realized. Maybe younger than he thought. A tool belt was slung around waist, different size hydrospanners nearly spilling out of the pouches, and the pockets of his mechanic’s overalls, running up and down his legs and jutting out above his boots, were stuffed with stray bolts and screws. Even his tall boots had spare, frayed wires slipping out the top. 

The mechanic’s overalls were tied off at the waist. He wore just a singlet and a rag slung around his neck as a poor excuse for a scarf. Protective goggles were pushed up into untamed curls that looked as oil-stained as his rags.

If he noticed Vader staring, the mechanic didn’t seem to be bothered. He kept his eyes at his work, clips holding a bundle of wires tight above the shell of his control panel as he worked the spanner.

It was his arms that caught Vader’s attention. His hands were gloved––sensible for a mechanic––but his arms were bound in once-white rags and leather up till the elbows. More tools snuck out the various pouches in the bindings––and the handle of at least one knife.

He was most definitely still on Tatooine.

In fact, if he tilted his head back, he could even catch a slash of the harsh suns forcing their way through the rags thrown over small, slitted windows. But Vader didn’t dare take his gaze off his mechanic.

Usually, for maintenance, he had been painfully conscious. But he’d never been in a position to observe, and usually with a much less obliging droid mechanic. Now, Vader watch with rapt attention what he could see; he didn’t know the extent of the damage, but it most have been a lot for the boy to be able to have get so deeply into his systems.

The mechanic spliced a series of wires back together, and Vader’s shuttering HUD suddenly lit up with information, clear and crystal-bright.

The boy didn’t even look back to check on the helmet and see if it had worked. That was when Vader _knew_ the mechanic was good.

His skill wouldn’t save his life––now he was more of a threat than ever that he had been so close to Vader’s systems––but perhaps Vader would gift him a painless death. Life on Tatooine had mostly likely been punishment enough.

Unaware to Vader’s thoughts, the mechanic simply shut the control panel, screwed it tight, and sliced open his left forearm.

“Where are we.” He would wring as much information out of the boy before he killed him.

“Tatooine.” The mechanic’s hands didn’t falter as he worked open a bunch of wires outside the frame of his skeleton.

“ _Where?”_

“You’re an off-worlder,” the mechanic remarked, eyes still down. “I don’t think it matters to you.”

“And how do you know that?” Vader demanded. He was more curious than he wanted to admit. Did the mechanic recognize him as Darth Vader, all the way out here on Tatooine? Or simply an Imperial?

“I pulled you out of that ship myself,” he replied matter-of-factly.

The slightest bit of unnerving crawled up Vader’s mechanical spine as the mechanic spliced open a series of wires. Those were his connecting nerves: that should have _hurt._ But Vader didn’t even feel the slightest pinch.

Anyone on any planet should not have been so…nonplussed. Everyone had  _opinions_ on the Empire, good or bad, even as backwater as Tatooine. It was frankly impossible that Vader had crash-landed in front of the only un-politic person in the entire galaxy. And even less so that anyone would show enough mercy to Darth Vader to disconnect his nerves before yanking them out.

Vader’s intrigue won out over his good sense. The man would be dead soon, Vader assured himself. There was no one to witness this but him and a ghost.

“Selling me for scrap?” he asked acerbically as the mechanic tossed the bundle of wires to the floor.

Finally, the mechanic looked up at him. His eyes were pale and face unamused. He had a sharp jaw and a strong, straight nose, but looked too fresh-faced for anyone on Tatooine.

“Not nearly,” he said. He jerked his chin towards the arm. “This is almost twenty years old. Even for Tatooine, that’s shit scrap.”

Vader breathed out. He still couldn’t do anything.

The mechanic stood up on the slab as he wiped his gloves on a rag, avoiding the lamp by sheer instinct. He stepped off and down, leaving his back wide open to Darth Vader who had a lightsaber still attached to his hip.

Vader traced his movements as best he could with his limited range of vision. He didn’t have to wait long before the mechanic came back with––an arm.

Not Vader’s, and certainly not Imperial regulation. Vader could see the imperfect soldering, and definitely a homemade mix of durasteel with something else; the wires had all been stripped to be replaced with white insulation, and Vader could see the detail of individual labelling.

In the mechanic’s other hand was a saw and a welder.

Vader’s breath didn’t speed up. It couldn’t. But his respirator whined to keep up with his beating heart.

“Don’t look,” the mechanic said, tone even, “this won’t be pretty.”

Vader roared as he thrashed against whatever held him down.

“Not again,” the mechanic snapped, dropping the arm and the saw next to Vader with a heavy _thud_. The Force reached out and––

* * *

  _The boy dies_.

Vader woke up tasting his blood on his lips. The mechanic’s blood would be on the air soon, and that would have to satisfy him. Until then––

“You’re awake,” interrupted the dead man. “Good. Now get out.”

Vader sat up––unheeded and unimpeded.

The vocoder didn’t let him gasp, but that was what it was. His limbs––all four of them––were lighter, limber; he could feel the poles and rods that had attached to his shoulder to support the weight of the left arm’s durasteel had been removed. His replacement knee joints moved without creaking and pain; the steel-enforced hip maneuvered freely.

His padding had been shredded and his cape was little more than a tear. Through it, he stretched out his arms––moving freely,  _easily,_ lighter than in _decades––_ and see four, sleek replacements of some strange durasteel hybrid. His skeletal limbs were chrome-gray with a twisting of only a dozen slim, labelled wires, insulated in white, tied off together in neat bunches.

The  _weight._ Vader’s head nearly spun at the lightness on his chest. The cavity where the control box had been was nearly gone; the box was flush to his skin and felt emptied of wires and metal. The HUD––clearer than ever––was reporting positives on all signs, except for nutrition. His oxygen was clear and easy.

Suddenly the metal man was once again as much man as metal.

“What did you _do.”_

Vader’s voice thundered through the workshop. It barely deserved the name: the roof was low and sloping, Vader’s helmet brushing the top, and the oblong shape was a mishmash of duracrete and stone. Every spare surface was littered with as many tools as its master had stuffed away. The two small slits of windows, covered in the same rags as the one the mechanic wore as a scarf, gave as much light as the dim glow-lamps. A faded green tarp hung over a door, the wind ruffling the bottom and brushing sand in across the bare, but clean, floor.

“I fixed you,” answered the mechanic, back to Vader. He was sat on a stool, hunched over the only proper table in the workshop, goggles down and welder in hand.

“You––you––“ Vader struggled for the words, struggled for the _rage,_ because the only other person who had cared enough to resuscitate him piece by piece, screw by screw, inch by inch, was his master. He had long given up his body to the service of the Empire, but it was the _Empire’s,_ not this Tatooinian junkrat. “You _changed_ me.”

The mechanic dropped his welding and turned around on his stool, pushing up his goggles into his hair. His eyes narrowed in what could only be annoyance.

“I dragged you in here three days ago half-dead,” said the mechanic, “because your life-support suit was doing it’s fuckin’ best to try and _kill_ you. That thing’s a piece’a shit, and it’s ancient. I’m not a doctor. ‘M just a mechanic. I fixed what was broken…or bad, I guess.”

The mechanic waited for just a moment. Vader couldn’t answer that.

The mechanic turned back around to the desk.

Vader stood there, in a new body, facing the man who had gave it to him, slackjawed and stunned with fury for lack of anything else. He wanted to bend something until it broke, until he could pick up the pieces and make sense of what had been there with what was left. But the only answers were left in his new sculptor.

“How did you _stop_ me?” That was the most important point. The best weapon of the Empire could _not_ be stopped.

“Oh, right,” said the mechanic, not turning around. He fished something out of the bindings around his wrist and tossed it over his shoulder. Vader caught it, automatically, in hand and flipped it over. It was a round disk, lined with intricate arrays, and tiny stray, frayed wires struggling out of it like a halo. “I found this in your control panel. I think it’s some sort of override switch. It also jacked up whatever was in your system and knocked you the hell out. I pulled it after installing the last arm.”

The disk crumpled within his hand. Vader stared at it, numbly, unsure whether that had been the Force or his own hand.

“A restraining device,” Vader said, every word strung taut with rage. A restraining _bolt._ Was this how his master planned to end his apprenticeship? Shut him down like a faulty droid? Not even the honor of a duel, or lightning surging through his systems?

“And a tracker, too, I think.”

The mechanic seemed unfazed by Vader’s anger. Somewhere beyond the burning of himself, like the collapsing of neutron star, Vader felt the foggy mist that swathed the unfathomable man. It swirled around him lazily, unbothered, like the Force couldn’t quite pierce through it.

The thought occurred to Vader suddenly. The mechanic had known what it was and yet willingly taken it out.

“I could have killed you.”

The mechanic drew the piece closer to him, and Vader saw the hint of an almost-smile unfurling on his lips, like he found it funny. “You already promised you would.”

Irritation struck through Vader again, lightning quick. He had things to be doing, he reminded himself. He was not dead. He had a duty to the Empire. The Death Star plans and the princess. Whatever tricks his master was up to––they had been dealt with. By the boy.

Which brought him back to the mechanic.

Should he kill him? Vader wondered idly. He was defenseless, and certainly wouldn’t be missed. Yet…he had done a better job servicing Vader’s mechanics than any droid had ever done. Even if he bribed him, people on Tatooine were easily bought––literally.

“What do you want?”

“For you to get out of my shop,” the mechanic responded, flatly, slipping his goggles back over his eyes. “I already told you.”

Vader ignored him, restlessly stalking closer. “What _did_ you want? Money? A position? Debts paid off? Why did you––” his lips curled underneath the mask, “–– _rescue_ me?”

Vader could see his jaw clench. “I _wanted_ your ship. You came with. Now I _want_ you to leave.”

Vader ground his teeth. “And why did you _fix_ me?”

The mechanic’s shoulders strung tight in irritation, but he didn’t look up. “You could be fixed. I guess.”

“You guess,” Vader repeated. “I told you I would kill you, boy, and I didn’t mean it in jest. Give me a reason not kill you.”

Finally––perhaps actually sensing danger––the mechanic dropped his tools with a clatter and spun around the seat, throwing his goggles down too.

“I didn’t see why you had to die if I could fix your parts,” he said, “so I _fixed_ you. It’s what I _do.”_ He pointed the spanner in his hand towards the door. “Now I have _other_ things to fix. So _go_ before I start regretting it.”

Vader remained unmoved. The mechanic gestured, annoyed. “You want a reason? I was bored. Didn’t have clients. Seemed like the right thing to do. Take your pick. Now, can you _leave––?”_

“Then what do I owe you?” Vader interrupted. “Since you have clients, and have been neglecting them.”

The mechanic dropped his hands and scowled. “Nothing.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Vader scoffed. “You run a shack mechanics shop in the middle of village in Tatooine. I’m sure you need the money of a clearly rich Imperial officer. So what’s the price?”

Was it freedom? Vader wondered. He didn’t see a master around, but maybe the man would name a slave-price. How easily would his new creator, the subject of his Empire,be bought? Who would he run to about rich Imperials?

“Just  _go,”_ snarled the mechanic, slamming the spanner down so hard it left a dent in the metal. “Leave me _alone_ is what I want. Stars, I should’ve picked up those droids instead.”

Vader froze.

“What droids?”

The mechanic looked up at him, cross. “Will you leave if I tell you?”

Vader considered it for a split moment. “Yes.”

He was truthful, because even he wasn’t sure if he was lying yet.

The mechanic eyed him, rightfully suspicious, but answered: “An R-2 unit and a 3PO. They landed a couple hundred yards out from you.”

Vader’s mind was already shifting back to the chase. An R-2 unit…could it be the princess’s?

“Whatever it is,” interrupted the mechanic, sounding carefully detached. Vader looked up to see the slightest bit of wariness––for the first time––sliding into his gaze. “I don’t want any part of it. Tatooine doesn’t need a war, as well. And _I_ sure as hell don’t.”

But Vader couldn’t unfasten his curiosity from the mechanic just yet. “What makes you think they’re important?”

“The Empire’s already here,” the mechanic pointed outside his poorman’s door. “With you in all your TIEs. The Rebellion’s coming soon.”

His prediction was more than accurate. Vader could always use an intelligent operative, especially if his master was proving to be hostile. Even if this one couldn’t recognize Darth Vader on sight.

The boy will live.

“Very well,” Vader announced, hand on his lightsaber hilt. As much as Tatooine might not want a war, there would be one as soon as Vader stepped out the door. “We’re leaving.”

“’Bout time,” the mechanic muttered, and turned back.

Vader stood behind him, impatient. “Where’s my TIE?”

If the mechanic had patched him up so easily, there was no way he could have resisted the TIE.

“Suns,” the mechanic put his head in hands, hissing. “It’s out back, but it’s completely busted. Take whatever the hell you want, if it gets out of my shop and off this starsforsaken planet.”

“And I’d suggest you take any valuables,” said Vader, “or sentimentals,” he tacked on, as an afterthought.

“What the hell are you talking about?” the mechanic demanded, bemused. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Vader considered. The mechanic was awfully attached to Tatooine, or at least his shop, for some completely unfathomable reason.

He would soon see.

“You’re not going to have much of a choice,” Vader called over his shoulder as he strode outand quickly made his way ‘round back. He tried not to notice the villagescape, or how much he recognized Anchorhead by sight alone.

The mechanic’s junkyard was massive, stretching out at least a couple acres of the desert. Camouflaged under piles of junkers and meticulously, purposefully broken speeders and TIE wings were the remnants of his TIE Advanced, half-completed, a small cargo ship, was what Vader wanted: an X-wing.

He breathed in, taking the Force with him, running under his skin like an underground river beneath the burning sands. He closed his eyes. He could feel the mechanic’s dim presence in the Force, clouded and indifferent, and beyond that––villagers, the muted pricks of stormtroopers, and…yes. Speeding towards Anchorhead, X-wings, a sharp path downward.

Not taking a chance on Darth Vader’s survival.

Vader’s eyes snapped open and he knocked away the other ships and parts with a single snap of his wrist. He took a running leap towards the cockpit, unlatching and starting the engine before he even ended his descent in the seat.

A smile very nearly touched his lips as the hatch hissed closed overtop him and he ran blindly through pre-flight checks, moving smoother and faster than almost any craft he’d ever flown. This boy was a _very_ good mechanic.

Within seconds, he was in the air.

He launched straight up with a single, smooth loop up and over the village so he could gain height and a little bit of homeground advantage. The winds took a billow of sand and errant linens up in the air; as he hung upside down for just that split second, he saw the form of the mechanic go sprinting out of his shop, wrench and jaw hitting the ground.

Vader took off like a _shot._ Whatever madness the mechanic had rigged into the X-wing, it would save its master’s life: Vader was running down the two Rebel X-wings in almost minutes, two dark birds high up in the bright blue sky, preparing to strafe Anchorhead.

He could feel their surprise in the Force and hair-trigger switch to fear as they recognized him: one pulled out of the strafing run as his partner went up first against Vader in defense.

It was laughably easy, not just in skill but in speed: within minutes Vader was ducking the hail of X-wing debris instead of the X-wings themselves.

Vader pulled off one last loop to settle into a pre-landing run as the Force lit up in warning. His spun around, sharp, and began to careen into a landing: he saw the mechanic shout at the shocked villagers to run for cover as the mechanic dove straight onto the ground, Vader’s X-wing feet above his head.

He rocked to stop with a spray of sand and lifted the hatch with a flick of the Force to rise on top of the nose, balancing on a tilted.

There––coming up the road from the desert in was a speeder full of unremarkably dressed citizens with blasters and grim faces. Rebels.

Vader unhooked his lightsaber, but didn’t light it.

Instead, he turned to the mechanic, crouched in the middle of the sand-strewn Anchorhead road, bare yardsfrom the X-wing, protectively cast around him.

“You saved my life,” Vader rumbled. He reached out a hand. “Let me save yours.”

The mechanic cast a wild glance over Vader’s shoulder.

Vader kept his eyes on him.

The mechanic scrabbled to his feet. His first few steps were shaking, but sprinted into a leap––

––Vader caught his forearm just as the mechanic grasped his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, OH MY GOSH! The wonderful @coleroz on tumblr did fanart of the mechanic and it’s literally EXACTLY how I imagined!!! Copy and paste to see: 
> 
> https://coleroz.tumblr.com/post/181499335009/six-hours-chapter-1-sheepfulsheepyard-star#notes 
> 
> (though, slight spoiler alert: the identity of the mechanic is identified with the art). It’s AMAZING. I’m considering selling my soul to coleroz.


	2. body in white

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mechanic is officially Vader's mechanic. Eventually. And Vader even learns his name. Also, Alderaan blows up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> give me six hours to cut down a tree, and I will spend four sharpening the axe.
> 
> body in white –– body in white is termed before painting & before the engine, chassis sub-assemblies, or trim (glass, door locks/handles, seats, upholstery, electronics, etcetera) have been assembled in the frame structure.

_CHAPTER TWO_

BODY IN WHITE

_body in white is termed before painting & before the engine, chassis sub-assemblies, or trim (glass, door locks/handles, seats, upholstery, electronics, etcetera) have been assembled in the frame structure._

* * *

 The X-wing––especially with the mechanic’s modifications––wasn’t made for planetary travel. They zipped across the deserts at a couple thousand feet of altitude, suns beating on the shining panelling. They would be in Mos Eisley in minutes.

Vader spared a thought for the Rebels down in Anchorhead. He’d send troops after them, he decided, with strict orders not to raze the town. He could allow this small mercy to the mechanic, gathering his things; Obi-Wan had denied him that, and anger still bristled under his skin after all these years at the thought of it.

Vader looped outside the strict flight path, carefully reaching out with the Force, scraping across all the nooks and crannies down below. At his touch, something alighted behind him: like the crystallization of dawn through the clouds, the sun after a storm––a dream on Tatooine.

Vader nearly turned around again, but realized that it was the mechanic next to him, crouched to the side of the cockpit. The X-wing certainly hadn’t been made to fit two people, let alone one over six foot. But the mechanic didn’t seem concerned: his gaze was out, across the sands that rippled like ocean water under the high noon.

Vader turned back to the controls. He remembered the first time he had seen Mos Espa fade into the distance, his mother with it––

Vader fiddled with the comms as he began to circle over the Imperial base at Mos Eisley. The base was already small enough that Vader wouldn’t be very pleased if he had to bomb it because the troopers thought he was a Rebel.

“Aurek-naught-naught-naught-two override,” Vader announced before the ensign could say a word. “Code: executioner.”

The comms buzzed, then––he could feel the fear trembling in the Force increase tenfold––“Yes, sir.”

That caught the mechanic’s attention, Vader could feel it, but neither said anything as he activated the landing sequence and settled down on the pad, ringed by round adobe buildings. Dust flew as Vader lifted the hatch and stood up.

He glared at the sorry collection of troopers that had assembled, including the captain, whose knees were knocking together in his armor.

Fear was _useless_ if it didn’t get _results._

“Assemble your men and search quadrant four for Rebels,” Vader ordered as he stepped off the wing. “Focus around Anchorhead. Look for two droids: an R-2 unit and a 3PO.  _No_ collateral. Contact the _Devastator_ _––yes,_ captain?”

Vader stared down the barrel of the blasters pointed at him by the platoon.

“Sir,” the captain said, voice surprisingly steady, “please move aside.”

Or, not at _him._

Vader turned, too. The mechanic stood on the opposite wing, arms crossed, and looking generally displeased but mostly unsurprised.

Vader waved an irritable hand. “That is my _mechanic;_ captain, stand down.”

“But, sir––” the captain spluttered, “he is _priority number one_ ––”

“ _I_ am the commander,” Vader said coldly, “ _I_ decide what is priority one.”

He considered, almost sadly, how bad the Tatooine forces had to be if the mechanic had been running a shop only a hundred miles away with an active customer base and yet the troops _still_ couldn’t find him. “And he is officially pardoned for any crimes he may have committed. With me.”

Nobody, not even Vader, was sure who he was addressing. The troops stood around, blasters held loosely, as Vader strode toward the command center, but the mechanic wasted no time leaping off the X-wing to land heavily a couple yards behind Vader and lengthen his stride to catch up.

“When do I get to leave?” the mechanic called from behind, just as Vader left the landing pad.

The troopers guarding the door to the command center scrambled to stand up straight at the sight of Vader, before fumbling for their blasters at a glimpse of the mechanic. Vader ignored the idiocy and stalked inside, on the hunt for a proper comms unit, and he heard the mechanic carelessly shoving his way past.

Good. He didn’t need any operatives who quaked at sight of a single stormtrooper.

“And go where?” Vader asked as servicemen scrambled out of his way. He turned a sharp corner, sending an ensign flying, relying on the uniformity of Imperial command centers to take him to the comms center. It should only be a couple of paces away…

“Where do you think?” asked the mechanic, just over Vader’s shoulder now. He sounded much more exasperated than demanding, to his credit, and continued chances of survival.

Vader finally pushed his way into the comms suite. It was little more than a bank of computers and three ensigns who clattered to their feet. He began to make his way over, but was interrupted by the mechanic stepping in front of him, arms once again crossed over his chest, blocking the ensigns.

“Hey,” was the way he announced his impudence to Vader. He had thirty seconds before Vader’s patience snapped and he took it out on his neck.

The mechanic looked Vader dead in the eye like he could track it beyond his mask. “I’m going back.”

That made Vader pause.

“To where?” asked Vader, incredulous. “The Rebels already came to Anchorhead. They will leave nothing for you to come back to.”

“The Rebels are there for _you_ ,” the mechanic said, sharply, and it was like the Force snapped into a blade, sharp as a scalpel, thin as a stiletto, before it dissolved into mist. “Not me.”

True.

“There will be nothing left for you,” Vader promised.

“Because I helped you,” the mechanic said bitterly, but resigned.

“Yes,” Vader admitted, “but the Rebels would have come for you anyway. Don’t take me for a fool,” Vader warned, “Tatooine is run by gangs and syndicates, not the Empire. Any man hiding on the edges of the Jundland Wastes and is Priority Number One for the Imperial garrison of Tatooine is an enemy of Jabba the Hutt, _not_ the Emperor.”

Vader took a step closer, looming over him. The mechanic met his eyes and didn’t flinch. “There was nothing for you here even before I arrived.”

He could feel it, and didn’t need the Force for it. Breathe it in the stale air. Lives slipped away on Tatooine like sand running down the dunes. Those who lived at the edge of the desert went first.

For once, the mechanic looked away.

He knew it, too.

Vader stepped around him.

“Open a line to the nearest Star Destroyer,” he ordered a pale-faced ensign. “I need the _Devastator._ Contact Montferrat with orders to rendezvous here. Prepare a shuttle.”

“Yes, sir,” the ensign stuttered, fumbling over the controls as Vader stood impatiently behind him. The signal bounced through the  _Avenger_ and the _Tyrant_ before it was passed up the line to Montferrat.

“The line is secure,” said the ensign in a quavery voice. Vader doubted it, but didn’t much care about anything than getting off this rock.

“Admiral,” Vader interrupted before Montferrat could answer. “What is your status? Jump to my coordinates immediately. Send a battalion of the 501st. And a pilot. I have a captured ship to be taken aboard.”

“Lord Vader, we were ordered to rejoin at Battlestation DS-1 with Grand Moff Tarkin,” said Montferrat. He was a thin, trembling man, constantly quivering in grating fear of Vader, but he was surprisingly swift and uncompromisingly dedicated. “We delivered the captive. We will jump at the Grand Moff’s approval.”

As an afterthought, Vader leaned into the Force. The mechanic had not reacted to the name _Vader._ Interesting.

“Very well,” Vader acknowledged, “alert him that I have the position of rogues from the captive vessel.”

“Yes, my lord. I will alert the _Avenger_ to arrive first.”

“See to it. Over.”

Vader abandoned the comm line as soon as a trooper burst into say a lambda-class shuttle was being readied. The mechanic followed him silently out at back to the landing pad. Next to the shuttle, the X-wing stood strong, waiting for its master. Vader cast a glance behind him as he strode up the gangplank. The mechanic followed a steady pace.

The mechanic was casting calculative looks around the shuttle as Vader stationed himself at the viewport, listening to the rumbling of the engines during the pre-flight checks. Vader kept his eyes on the soldiers running around like ants below, but kept his finger on the pulse of the Force. The man prowled around the cabin, unbothered, examining this and that, before he finally crouched on the seat opposite Vader, eyes on the shuttle’s other viewport.

“Where are we going?” The mechanic finally asked the right question.

Tarkin. His Death Star. To save the Empire.

“To my flagship, the _Devastator_ ,” answered Vader. “You’ll be given a position there.”

There was a sudden, spectacular flash in the Force like the cracking of a bomb on the shell of the horizon, splitting through his skull with the force of a lightsaber. It sank through his armor, through the prosthetics and mechanics, all the way down to pierce his heart, freeze his blood, and smelt his bones.

It was _terror._

Vader was nearly a half-second too slow, but with the aid of the Force he grabbed the mechanic’s shoulder just as he bolted for the viewport with a knife he pulled––a foot long, sharp, and ready to bust through the transparisteel.

“You are my _mechanic,_ ” Vader scolded, grip fierce on his shoulder. His new arms delivered just as much force as his old, clunky ones. Still, he curled the Force around the lines of the mechanic’s shoulders, thrumming with tension. “You are supposed to be _fixing_ ships, not jumping out of them.”

A part of Vader delighted in the violence. It wasn’t good of an operative, but the full-throttle twist and vault of indifference into intensity thrilled him. Had he ever met anyone like this?

The mechanic’s grip tightened around the knife and he looked over his shoulder to meet Vader’s gaze. For the first time, there was  _something_ there. Terror burned away the mist shrouding him in the Force, leaving something raw, exposed, _dangerous,_ and he  _snarled._

“If you want to take me as a slave,” the man said lowly, “you’ll die before I do.”

_Oh._

The man’s brutality was not so thrilling anymore. It wasn’t borne––it was bred. Begotten for the amusement of another master.

Vader removed his hand, but kept the Force tightly wound around both the man’s arms.

“If you take me as a slaver,” Vader informed him, “then I would  _allow_ you to kill me.”

A shift, a pause. That same sliver of a dagger that revealed the mechanic in the Force focused on him.

He wouldn’t allow it, of course. Or would he? And could the mechanic? He had come close before…

“You will be my mechanic,” Vader continued. “For your skill. I have decided. There will be nothing you do which is not compensated. You earn what you deserve. A _job,_ not a slave.”

“I don’t believe you,” the man said bluntly. The Force echoed his accusation, but fog shifted in around him. He _did_ believe him. Almost.

Vader was almost affronted. “I have not lied to you yet.”

“You said you’d kill me.” The man tilted his head, that challenging almost-smile on his face. “You haven’t kept that promise.”

“Maybe I will,” Vader surprised himself with the truth. More mist billowed across the Force, and Vader knew he was winning the man over. “My employees are not known to live long after failure.”

The man actually laughed. It was a rough, barking sound, like sandpaper scratching against stone. “And how is this any different than slavery?”

It hit too close, too truthful. He said _slavery_ like he knew it and could feel the Force binding his wrists.

“Because the only one you have to fear is _me_ ,” Vader countered. “No harm will come to you as long as you do not fail me. I know you have enemies. They will not cross me.”

Vader was hit, then, with a surge of righteousness: the mechanic would be a slave no more, if that is what he had been. It was only justice.

The mechanic still considered him, eyes drifting past Vader to the viewport where the blue of the sky was quickly fading to indigo.

“I don’t fear you,” said the mechanic eventually, perhaps stupidly, but certainly truthfully. The Force rang with it. Perhaps not stupidly, though: fear had made the troops useless and cowardly, and Vader had always appreciated bravery.

And besides––the man had seen him at his weakest, had nearly killed him, and had fixed him. So maybe he had everything to fear. Vader would show no weakness.

“Then you have nothing to fear.”

The man didn’t move. Vader added: “You will not have a transmitter. You will be allowed to leave at anytime.”

The man surprised him by snorting. “From an Imperial ship? I’m sure.”

“That X-wing is yours and yours alone,” Vader promised. “It will be put in my personal hangar. Should you wish to leave, you will.”

“And if my skill is worth what you say it is?” the man challenged. “If it’s worth a million credits per ship, will you really let me leave your _service?”_

“As long as you serve me, you won’t have me as your enemy,” Vader said. Vader didn’t dispute the fact that it was his service, and not the Imperial Navy’s. His will and the Empire’s were one and the same. And if the boy thought he could face the Empire––he smiled, nastily, under the mask. “If you really don’t fear me now, will you fear me then?”

As though the mechanic could sense Vader’s macabre mirth, the man laughed, again. It was still hoarse and harsh.

Cautiously, slowly, Vader allowed the Force to unwind and slip off the mechanic’s shoulders as the man turned to face him. He slid the knife back into the bindings on his left arm before he crossed his arms.

“A million credits per ship it is,” Vader decided. “You will also receive your usual salary, and compensation for any other work I have you do.”

He flexed his new arm, gray and gleaming under the harsh shuttle lights, the raggedy padding moving around it. The mechanic traced the movements with his eyes and nodded.

Then something sparked in the Force––genuine surprise.

“ _A_ _million credits?”_ the mechanic repeated, incredulously, just as the trooper announced they had reached and would be docking with the _Avenger._

Vader brushed him off. “Accusing me of lying again, mechanic?”

* * *

 Another hyperspace jump and a shuttle ride later, Vader was back on the bridge of the _Devastator_ and inches away from ringing Tarkin’s neck, his master be damned.

“He wants to blow up Alderaan,” Vader repeated, almost disbelieving, as if he couldn’t see the Death Star and Alderaan looming in the distance off the bridge.

“Yes, my lord,” said Montferrat at his side, still in stiff salute. Vader felt no need to let him at ease. “To convince the princess to give up the information.”

Being back on his flagship was a relief Vader wouldn’t admit to feeling. Finally, surrounded by some measure of competency––at least from the 501st––and no one who would dare question his orders. Vader saw Montferrat’s eyes slide back towards the mechanic, who had silently followed him aboard the bridge and was leaning over his folded arms on a balustrade, apparently immune to all the covert staring.

“Not simply a threat?”

“No, my lord. He has ordered the fleet back in preparation of the laser.”

 _Foolish,_ he wanted to say, but couldn’t breathe a word against the Grand Moff, his master’s pet. Instead, he said, “She is the highest ranking member of the Rebellion we have in captivity. We can leverage nothing against her except for her planet. If Alderaan is destroyed, she has nothing left to lose. Prepare a shuttle. I will speak with the Grand Moff myself.”

He just turned to leave, the mechanic straightening up to follow him, when he felt it: the trembling, fracturing, _ripping_ of the Force like a seam split through the earth and swallowed everything whole, leaving nothing the churning of a raw wound.

When Vader turned back around, Alderaan was gone. The screams of billions echoed in his ears. Smaller, tinnier, was the sheer shock of the bridge and the mechanic’s horror shaking through the Force.

“Belay that order,” said Vader, automatically, staring blankly out over the grave of Alderaan. “Shields up, protect from the debris.”

Someone followed his order, and a chunk of continent burned against the raised shields. Vader stood on the silent bridge, contemplating.

He had underestimated Tarkin’s bloodlust and sheer bullheadedness. Had he even gained back the plans? Now, with Alderaan destroyed, they had no leverage left but hope that the Princess Organa would give into torture or that the Rebellion would slip up. And with Alderaan gone, a Core World, with alliances all over the galaxy…the damage was unfathomable.

Fear gave easily into rage. Any man would a friend on Alderaan would swell the ranks of the Rebellion, unless the Empire destroyed every other planet in the system. The loss of resources, men, firepower…

Was Tarkin _mad?_

Vader seriously considered the question. Finally, _finally,_ had the Rebellion been forced to the brink of collapse in recent times, the Empire stabilizing, civil wars ending, and Tarkin had––literally––blown up the stability of their own Empire.

No. No, Vader realized, suddenly, the thought cresting over Alderaan’s ruins like dawn breaking: this was not Tarkin. Not entirely. This was _Palpatine._

Chaos would fuel nothing but Palpatine’s own powers. Vader seethed with anger at the thought. His master would bury a kill switch deep inside him, let loose the disbeliever Tarkin on their own Empire, the Empire he had _promised_ Vader, had sworn order, control, _peace,_ and would not even do him the honor of stabbing him in the back. He would let some _machine_ do that.

Can you feel this, Master? Vader wondered. Do you know what I will do?

At the thought, he shuttered his thoughts, raising the shields on his own mind.

“Admiral, prepare me that shuttle when the path is clear,” he ordered, breaking the silence on the deck.

“Until then––you,” he stabbed a finger at the mechanic, whose eyes were still transfixed on Alderaan’s corpse. “With me.”

The mechanic followed him off the bridge. The Force hung about him in silent, shocked curtains, like a funeral shroud.

Good. Vader didn’t need anymore chatter.

Just as he thought it and they boarded a lift, the mechanic interrupted like he sensed Vader’s desire for quiet and sought to spite him.

“Why was it built?” he asked. “You could just strafe a planet. You don’t need to blow it up.”

Vader jabbed at the button with the Force and the door slid closed.

“Excellent question,” he said acidly. Only several trillion credits, mountains of kyber crystal, and twenty years were wasted on that heap.

They fell back into silence as the lift slid down levels and for the rest of the lengthy journey. Vader strode out the second it opened, not bothering to look back and see if the mechanic was following. He heard the whirring of military-grade hydrospanners and clanking of metal before they entered into the engineering block, stationed right above the hangars.

Everything went deadly silent as Vader entered.

“Lord Vader!” the only man sitting at a desk stumbled to his feet, knocking the desk forward.

Maberust was the name of the Chief of Engineers, and he was passable at best. He barely did anything but pass projects on up to Vader, which is how Vader liked it, except for the fact that he had the rest of the military and the fleet to run and (as much as he wished) could not consult every blueprint that crossed his desk. He was at least better than Tarkin’s pick of Director Krennic and his stable of hooligans solely dedicated to the Death Star.

“This is––” Vader paused. What was the mechanic’s name? He glared at him expectantly.

“Lars,” the man supplied. _A freeborn name_ , something in Vader whispered. _Freeborn name first._ “Luke Lars.”

“Lars is new Chief Engineer, effective immediately,” Vader ordered. “He is also my personal mechanic and given sole control over my personal hangar.”

Maberust stared at him, dumbfounded, along with the rest of the garage. He stumbled into a salute just as Vader began to feel the mechanic’s––Lars’s––irritation pricking at him.

Vader spun on his heel and exited, heading for his personal hangar the floor up. Lars followed.

“You said _fix ships,_ ” Lars said sourly, “I didn’t sign up for whatever the hell that is.”

“And _I_ hired a competent engineer,” Vader said, entering another lift. “Your main priority is my ships––my TIE Advanced is the most used in dogfights. Maintain and improve it as I direct you. The Engineering Corps drafts all the blueprints and maintains all of the interdictor, starfighter, and cargo fleets.  _You_ will make sure those blueprints are, at least, decent.”

“And if they aren’t?” Lars asked, sounding more irritated by the second.

“Dismiss the incompetents and hire the competent,” Vader said, equally irritated. “It is simple math.”

He felt Lars’s glare on the side of his face as they exited the lift and the hangar doors swept open––and how it disappeared as Lars caught sight of the ships within.

The doors hissed shut behind them, leaving them alone in the vast hangar bay. The ceilings were vaulted high to accommodate Vader’s series of TIE Advanced, an assemblage of antique Clone Wars starfighters, and the J-type 327 Nubian, as well as the double hatch straight into space at the far end and numerous engineering bays. And––the Force flared with a spark of surprise as Lars’s gaze caught it––the T65B X-wing.

“You have direction of everything here but the J-type,” said Vader. The haze of Lars’s Force presence was growing murkier by the second, already fully distracted by the ships and dropping his attention on Vader to sail away into the land of machines. “Modify it–– _touch_ it––and I will kill you.”

Lars acknowledged him with half a nod, eyes still on the X-wing. The s-foils were damaged from Vader’s swift crash-landing in Anchorhead, and Lars’s embers of excitement were quickly stoked into aggravation as he caught sight of the rest of the TIEs––many missing foils and the cockpits nearly turned inside-out with half-finished projects.

“What in the seven hells did you do to these?” he demanded, turning back to Vader. “Half of them are barely better than scrap!”

“I need at least one mobile within a day cycle,” Vader overrode him. “Take whatever or whoever you need. I will need to debrief with Grand Moff Tarkin soon. Before then, you will need to consult schematics.”

Lars fumed, a hydrospanner already in hand. “If you want one flight-ready in twenty-four hours you should leave me _here_! I don’t need a blueprint for a broken wing!”

Vader ignored him.

“I will need some specific modifications done. Schematics are required.”

Lars folded his arms. “Like  _what?”_

“Proton torpedoes,” said Vader, “I think.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo! more of luke's backstory. we'll get more deeply into it, later >:) vader's only spent a total of like three days awake in luke's presence and he's already having an Awakening. (or, a Lukening, if you will.) also, vader hating the death star is the hill i die on, in case you didn't notice


	3. interlude: accelerated life testing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan Kenobi is haunted by the shattered remains of the Skywalker family. But Luke Skywalker isn't dead and neither is Leia. So Obi-Wan's just got to keep on living.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> accelerated life testing -- is the process of testing a product by subjecting it to conditions (stress, strain, temperatures, voltage, vibration rate, pressure etc.) in excess of its normal service parameters in an effort to uncover faults and potential modes of failure in a short amount of time.

_INTERLUDE_

ACCELERATED LIFE TESTING

_is the process of testing a product by subjecting it to conditions (stress, strain, temperatures, voltage, vibration rate, pressure etc.) in excess of its normal service parameters in an effort to uncover faults and potential modes of failure in a short amount of time._

* * *

  _Four days ago…_

* * *

 The second Darth Vader’s ship plummeted out of orbit, earthbound, Obi-Wan hid.

It wasn’t his proudest moment. But after twenty years on Tatooine, pride whispered while pragmatism screamed. He watched wide-eyed from his cliff-side hovel, shields battening down the Force around him, as the starfighter streaked a black scratch across the sky, hitting the dunes miles away with a fiery bang. 

Vader wasn’t dead, of course. Obi-Wan didn’t need the Force to know that: all he needed was a basic account of Anakin Skywalker’s spectacular piloting skills. 

But Obi-Wan carefully didn’t think of that. What he thought of, instead, was whether or not he needed to finish the job––once and for all.

It was either a miracle of the Force or a straight-up curse that Vader had nearly literally landed in Obi-Wan’s lap. Once again, Obi-Wan thought in a bitter daze, he was left standing as the unwilling executioner. 

At the very thought, Obi-Wan realized he would need his lightsaber to do the job. And then he nearly vomited.

Anakin. That was _Anakin––_

_Vader. Vader is here, injured, alone––_

Information, Obi-Wan told himself. He needed information, his saber, and a speeder. That was the Jundland Wastes out there, Vader was maybe a dozen miles deep into the territory, and if Obi-Wan had learned anything in the past two decades, it was that the desert wasn’t to be trifled with. Not even a Jedi could brave those conditions on a wild chase.

 _Luke, could he have heard of Luke––? No, I have been scouring the planet for years––_  

Obi-Wan turned his back on the door and sought the plain wooden box on his rough-hewn cave wall serving as a counter.

 _But Vader is his father––and Anakin––if anyone could sense Luke’s presence, it would_ him––

Two lightsabers were in there. Both were blue. Obi-Wan considered, for a moment, poetic justice and dramatic death. Then he reminded himself he was being ridiculous and two swords were always better than one.

He took his cloak and left. If everything went according to the plan he didn’t have, he would never be back. 

* * *

  His first stop was Anchorhead. A crash in the desert was free scrap, and the Jawas and every opportunists would be on the site like flies on a carcass. Obi-Wan needed a quick flight into the desert and what he lacked in credits he made up in charm.

He wasn’t terribly worried about his quarry being taken––if all the reports were to be believed, Vader could certainly defend himself well enough. Obi-Wan was more concerned about the damage Vader would wreck in the process and while Tatooine had more than its fair share of scum, very few deserved to die at Vader’s hand.

“Ah, you too, Kenobi?” asked a vendor whose stand he had frequented enough that she had no qualms about harassing him. And if she thought he was a wizard, she certainly didn’t care when it came to haggling about bread. “Everyone’s pouring in for the crash.”

Obi-Wan smiled, slipping away his unease. “So I’ll have competition for a ride, then?”

Denjama cackled. “Oh, you will! Even the mechanic who lives down at the northern gate took off. That’s what sent all the boys running––he always gets the best scrap.”

––he’d expected this, but not really. He needed a change of plan. Obi-Wan didn’t particularly want to leave Anchorhead when it was in imminent danger of Darth Vader’s fury, but he needed reinforcements––or did he? It had been years since he’d had to think this strategically, and he found himself at sudden loss that only Anakin could inspire.

The thought was sickening, and Obi-Wan felt so _old,_ all at once. Could he really take Vader? No, was the answer he found, but he didn’t find any other answers. 

Obi-Wan forced a chuckle. The time it took to walk to Anchorhead had already set him miles behind. “Well, there goes my attempt. I’ll just go onto back home, I suppose, since I’ve already come this far." 

He spoke without thought, but the more he thought about it, the sounder it sounded. He didn’t know why Vader was in Tatooinian airspace in the first place––he hated the place, and would never willingly come back here, unless he wanted something so desperately it overcame his hatred.

But Vader’s hatred had always been his downfall. And Obi-Wan Kenobi _was_ his hatred.

“You’ve an odd way about you, Kenobi,” Denjama remarked. “But the Windhaven girl two streets down is leaving for some of the moisture farms this afternoon. See if you can’t patch a ride.”

Yes, Obi-Wan thought. He could more than sufficient provide distraction for Vader, whatever his goals were, if he fully opened himself up to the Force. Vader’s rage would catch like a hound on a scent.

“Always a good one,” Obi-Wan said appreciatively.

 _I hope you live,_ Obi-Wan thought. He did not think the same for himself.

* * *

 And so he found himself back at his little hovel. Not truly a surprise, Obi-Wan supposed, since things never went the way he planned. He sat crosslegged in front of the hut entrance, eyes closed and lightsaber in front of him.

He sunk into the Force easily. It had been his only companion these long years, elusive and fickle as it could be when it came to the Skywalkers. Obi-Wan breathed it in, once, twice, and it tasted like the cool morning mist of the sea.

The Force welcomed his touch, and laid itself out before him strong and firm as though he was a stone skipping across the pond. Obi-Wan cast himself out in the great sea of sand before, out, out into the universe, until he felt the barren Tatooine roar to life, a burst of fresh water plunging out of a dry faucet into a deep fountain bowl.

To his surprise, Obi-Wan could not find Vader. Not immediately. He cast out his gaze like a net trawling through the deep ocean floor, but he had to throw it once, twice, a hundred times until it caught on something.

 _There._ It was like grasping blindly through heavy woollen curtains, trying to find a latch. As soon as he threw the veil aside, Obi-Wan’s vision lit up with red.

It _seared_ through the Force. An angry, _angry_ raw wound that screamed as it scabbed, scratching at itself to bleed it again. It collapsed on itself and gnawing, ravenous, furious and feasting on even its own flesh when it could find nothing to satiate it: this was Darth Vader.

For a moment, Obi-Wan’s mind wailed. Where was Anakin? he begged. This was not him, not his Anakin, who had burned so like the sun he seared the Force.

Obi-Wan steadied himself. This was not Anakin, he said firmly, desperately. This was Vader, and even the Force knew it.

And so, without warning, he jabbed at the sleeping beast.

Vader howled back to life. The Force cried around Obi-Wan with Vader’s pain, but under the onslaught Obi-Wan could not tell the difference between Vader’s wretched existence, his red-hot rage, and his new wounds, until he grasped, through the cloudy vision of the Force, a––

––gone. Black. Obi-Wan startled awake. Just as soon as he had caught him, Vader’s presence was wiped clean from the Force.

He wasn’t dead, of course not, no, he simply couldn’t be. He must be more grievously injured than Obi-Wan had thought, if he was passing out like that, and not even recognizing Obi-Wan, let alone responding to his taunts––

Something beeped. Obi-Wan blinked. It was dawn again, he realized. How many times had it been dawn over?

Another, irritated beep.

A relic of the ancient past glared at him, as much as a droid could glare at anyone, but Obi-Wan faintly thought of Anakin’s insistence on Artoo’s personality and much agreed.

Artoo beeped and buzzed violently as Threepio chattered about him, and Obi-Wan stumbled to his feet.

“Stop it, stop it,” he cried, because the memories were too fresh and the Force bright, overwhelming. The droids obliged, and Obi-Wan’s cheeks reddened at his lack of composure. “I mean––my binary is simply rusty, old friend.”

“I can translate, sir!” cried Threepio. “Why, I am fluent in over six million forms of––”

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan interrupted, already shouldering the usual familiarity of Threepio.

“And you are––?”

“Ben,” Obi-Wan said automatically. Artoo violently snorted.

“Well, if he is a general than we should be on our very _best_ behavior, not spreading slanderous lies––“

“No, please,” Obi-Wan invited. “What does the droid say?”

Threepio sounded startled as Artoo’s ocular receptor glared at him. “He says he has an urgent message from the Princess Leia Organa.”

The two faded from Obi-Wan’s mind as the image flickered to life.

 _“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,”_ Anakin’s daughter pleaded, Padmé’s eyes staring up at him, _“you’re my only hope.”_

Obi-Wan collapsed heavily, not even remembered when he had decided to sit. The message played again and again and Obi-Wan drank in the sight of Leia like a dying man.

Leia needed him. Who was he to deny her, when he had the droid right here, and the Empire on her tail? She had been _captured,_ Obi-Wan listened with a half-ear to Artoo. By Vader himself, who was now lost to the sands.

But Luke…

The last time he had seen Luke’s face, the boy had been six. The last time he had heard of Luke was a year later, that the boy had fled into the desert, away from the corpses of his aunt and uncle, mutilated by Tusken Raiders.

He was still _alive._ That was Obi-Wan’s eternal struggle, failure, because he _knew_ Luke was alive, and still on Tatooine, but for the life of him could not find him. He had bargained with every single man, woman, and slave on the planet with every single coin and might he had.

Nothing. Luke was gone from his sight, but he couldn’t be dead.

Bail had urged him otherwise, heavily but not unkindly. But Bail didn’t have the Force, and three Skywalkers were converged around Tatooine––weren’t they?

But, Obi-Wan considered suddenly: if Luke was invisible to him, then surely Vader would not be able to find him, either, blood relation or no.

“We came upon in the desert,” Threepio was rambling, “well, there are very _many_ deserts here, I suppose, and first found another crash site, of an Imperial TIE, with whom I could have _sworn_ was Lord Vader. But another fellow arrived with a speeder and took him aboard––and the ship, too!––shooed us off, said that others would come for the scrap…”

Vader––someone had…taken Vader? For scrap?

Obi-Wan abruptly felt like laughing. This was a fine mess he was in, truly. Here he was, stuck between Luke’s phantom, Leia’s message, Padmé’s ghost, who whispered about the Rebellion in his ear, and Vader’s starsforsaken carcass, apparently dragged away by the local mechanic who most likely had no idea he had accidentally captured and was disassembling the Dark Lord of the Sith.

But––now he knew where Vader _was._ That was one problem squared away, wasn’t it? That only left three others.

Obi-Wan rose to his feet. Yes, three problems. He could make do with that.

“Come now, old friends,” he said, “off to Alderaan we go.”

* * *

 Mos Eisley found him creeping around Imperials in all manners of ways that made his back creak.

By dawn the next day, word of Vader’s crash had spread through the whole planet, let alone the port, and the Imperials were losing their minds about it. Vader was still missing with no word out of Anchorhead of any sort of massacre. So he was still injured, then.

Noon found him at the tiny civilian comms suite attached to the space port. It had taken him no shortage of the Force and greased palms to get a secure link to Alderaan, but here he was, crammed in the booth with two whining droids.

“Obi-Wan,” Bail said in surprise and horror when his image formed. Obi-Wan, meanwhile, just smiled. How long had it been since a friendly face? His heart ached for the sweet sensation of it. “Have you heard?”

“That Vader’s down on Tatooine and your daughter has been captured? Yes. I’m coming.” He tilted his head. “With the droids.”

He didn’t know what assurance that would be, but Bail’s face crumpled in relief, but quickly rearranged itself into something almost calm.

“I’m sending cash,” Bail said, “and alerting our allies in the area to meet at your last known coordinates. Where should they meet? Do you know where Vader _is?_ What happened?”

Obi-Wan smiled bitterly. “Why, take a guess. It involved a space battle and what I can only assume was some truly inspired piloting.”

“He crashed, then. What’s the location?”

Obi-Wan considered. Shouldn’t he have some sort of special privilege to kill Vader? But he didn’t and couldn’t, he already knew that.

Besides, the Force was whispering in his ear and the waves were changing course. On the very edges of the sea, over the horizon, he could almost feel Leia calling.

“No one will come back from that alive,” Obi-Wan warned. He didn’t know what closed his heart: the thought of all those dying men, or that Vader may very well be among them soon, if that was his condition.

“That’s not a problem,” Bail said sharply. There was something feverish about him, the something wicked Vader alighted in everyone. “It’s _Vader._ Do you know how many consider it worth dying for just to get a single shot at him?”

“Oh, I’m aware,” Obi-Wan said coldly in turn. “Very well. The dead aren’t worth the living, and all that. Or the walking dead, I suppose. Anchorhead, quadrant four, a mechanic’s shop at the northern gate. He’s injured. Very.” Obi-Wan hesitated. “I can feel it.”

“Soon,” Bail promised, but Obi-Wan didn’t know what. His gaze softened. “I can’t wait to see you, old friend.”

Obi-Wan smiled, and it almost felt real. “You, as well.”

* * *

 The gaggle who met him outside of Mos Eisley ten hours later didn’t bother to introduce themselves, and so Obi-Wan extended them the same courtesy, not even when eyes caught on the hilts hanging on his belt.

They were off to Anchorhead quickly, sands flying behind them, and meeting with the air support, the point leader explained. Their speeders were fast but the X-wings were faster and as soon as they caught sight of Anchorhead’s pale city walls on the horizon did they see the X-wings hanging in the sky. Not a strafing, they assured Obi-Wan, just a single bomb.

That was when the two X-wings exploded overhead in quick succession.

Obi-Wan’s blood ran cold as the leader yelled to gun it and the speeders kicked into high gear. The attacking craft above was an X-wing, too, but moving to smooth and sleek to be piloted by anyone but a Force-sensitive.

 _Vader._ Awake–– _how?_ Why didn’t Obi-Wan _feel_ it? He reached for the Force again but every presence around him felt muffled, muted, like wool in his ears and a gag in his mouth.

How was that possible? That was not Vader, for sure, it must be someone else, but he would _know_ a Force presence like this, someone who was dampening down and blocking out the world, trying to sink in with the desert sands.

The speeder pulled up to a stop just as the X-wing above careened around to land–– _barely––_ in front of the gate, stopping with a spray of sand and a bent wing.

The wind howled but the desert was silent. Obi-Wan was on his feet, lightsaber drawn, feet away from the monster of a man in black who stepped atop the ship.

He still felt nothing in the Force. Or, perhaps, he could feel nothing at all. He could do nothing but stare.

Vader’s cloak streamed out behind him raggedly, and his armor was shredded. Bare black prostheses gleamed under the sun.

Vader drew his saber, but not the blade.

And turned away.

Obi-Wan took a step closer. Behind the shell of the X-wing he could see the form of a man, on his knees––Obi-Wan’s heart jerked when he knew he would have to watch Vader murder this man––but then his eyes caught on him, really, and he _saw_ him.

Suns-bleached curls. The set of the jaw and the aquiline nose, the blue of his eyes––oh, stars, the _blue_ ––and Obi-Wan reached with the Force, in blind, sheer joy––

––and found nothing but mist dissolving beneath his hands, like the lost boy was not even there. The mirage rebounded off of him, hiding Luke within the Force of everything else around him, shielding and deflecting, like a curtain of fog around mountains. If Obi-Wan had not seen him with his own two eyes, he would not have felt Luke, or Vader, in the Force, or––

“You saved my life.”

Vader’s new voice was loud. Louder than all the desert, the scratching of the sands and beating of the winds and the pounding of Obi-Wan’s heart.

He reached out a skeletal hand. “Let me save yours.”

Obi-Wan had screamed at Anakin––at Vader, at what was left of Anakin––on Mustafar, in the scorching, burning of the volcano. In the dry heat of Tatooine, he could not even lift his voice to breathe as Luke Skywalker took his father’s hand.

* * *

 Obi-Wan did not know how he had made it back to Mos Eisley, let alone how he ended up in the _Millennium Falcon_  while keeping the droids hidden _,_ or where the rest of the Rebels had went _._ He didn’t very much care, honestly. It was probably a miracle he was not dead in a ditch, he realized somewhere in the back of his mind. He cared even less about that.

What was getting through to him, though, was how very annoying Captain Han Solo was. 

“We’re coming up on Alderaan, and what _better_ be my money,” he announced. What was most annoying about Solo, Obi-Wan reflected from his seat in the cockpit, was that he was decently clever, which was dangerous. It made him all the more annoying. “And––where the  _hell_ did that moon come from?”

Dying. People had died here, Obi-Wan realized. Alderaan had died here. 

“That’s no moon,” Obi-Wan said.

“No _shit,_ old man, it’s got a tractor beam and is pulling us aboard!” 

Aboard, huh?

* * *

 He assigned himself the task of shutting off the shields. They had to get off the Death Star and out, to _somewhere,_ and with Leia _._ Obi-Wan would serve as a convenient distraction––hopefully––while Solo and the Wookiee got the princess.

But the senior staff remained unaware of him. Vader was nowhere on the Death Star, which was almost a pity, because after all the events of the past few days Obi-Wan very much would have enjoyed dying at the moment and Vader seemed like the easiest way to accomplish that. Why, Obi-Wan imagined it would please Vader very much, and the spite actually gave him the momentum needed to push forwards.

Leia would need him. Maybe.

And if he wasn’t needed, well…Obi-Wan would figure that one out.

* * *

 Back aboard the _Millennium Falcon,_ Leia shouted at Solo to hurry it up and then turned around and gave Obi-Wan a sweet smile and hug. The whiplash was almost neck-breaking and the hug was almost back-bending.

Obi-Wan tried to hug her back, but he was so surprised his arms didn’t move, and he wasn’t very sure of the motion, anyway.

“I’m sorry for Alderaan, Your Highness,” he said, and he meant it. Obi-Wan was sorry that Leia had to feel what it was like to have your world collapse around you, your family destroyed, and have to sift through the cinders to find something––anything––left behind. Obi-Wan was sorry that he was all that was left for her. “I knew your father well.” 

It felt like ash in his mouth. Bail was dead. Anakin was worse.

Leia nodded, blinking rapidly, but there was fire in her eyes burning away the tears. “We can’t mourn yet, General Kenobi.”

Funny. Obi-Wan didn’t know if he had ever stopped. 

* * *

  _Now…_

* * *

 “Well?” Vader demanded, circling around the display where the schematics of the Death Star lit up Lars’s features and the dark circles under his eyes. The boy was pale for a Tatooinian, and even ten hours in space and his skin was turning bone-white.

The console in Vader’s private quarters was the one other place the DS-1 Battlestation plans could be accessed other than Tarkin’s offices after Scarif had been obliterated.

“Will proton torpedoes work?”

Lars looked up, but Vader was behind him. “Yes.”

Vader’s breath hissed out. He wondered, with slow swell of satisfaction, what his master’s reaction would be to hearing his mechanical terror had been blown to pieces just like Jedha, Scarif, and Alderaan.

“Can you source several and modify my TIE Advanced with them?”

Vader was no toy, not like the Death Star. And he would not be played with.

“Yes.”

Vader didn’t move from where he loomed behind the boy. “Can you do it _quietly_?”

He already knew the answer. So did Lars. No near-slave of Tatooine on the run from Hutts and Imperials and a hidden fleet of ships in a junkyard would find such underhanded tactics difficult.

“I didn’t think you hired me for treason.”

Lars was looking straight ahead, back still to Vader, arms braced on the round console.

Vader bristled. It was not treason if it was _him._ He had only the welfare of the Empire in mind, even when the Emperor did not. 

“I hired you to build ships,” Vader said. “Build me one.”

Lars said nothing.

Then, as an afterthought, Vader asked, “Besides, what do you care of treason, anyway?”

Vader watched the back of Lars’s shoulders move in a shrug. “I care if it gets me killed.”

“You don’t care that much about death,” Vader said bluntly, “or else you wouldn’t be working for me.”

“Fine,” Lars sighed, and slumped forward further on his forearms. “Let’s blow up the Death Star, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! okay, so i didn't plan for the interlude, but i figured it would help if we saw what was going on from everyone else's eyes. something's seriously wrong with luke, huh, right? >:D and, hmm, what's going on with luke's presence in the force? don't worry, we'll get there!


	4. backdrive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vader takes on the Death Star. So does Obi-Wan. And they take on each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is a component used in reverse to obtain its input from its output. This extends to many concepts and systems from thought-based to practical mechanical applications.

_CHAPTER THREE_

BACKDRIVE

_is a component used in reverse to obtain its input from its output. This extends to many concepts and systems from thought based to practical mechanical applications._

* * *

Tarkin may have been a fool, but he wasn’t _stupid._ There was a very important distinction there, Vader felt. That was why he sent Lars from his quarters and proceeded to repair his own armor.

Lars had been merciless with the demolition of the padding, but sensible: there was virtually nothing left around his protheses, but it did not extend past the insert port and expose his ruined flesh to the elements. Lars had cut into slices into the protective padding to remove the durasteel rods plating his remaining stumps as an exoskeleton to support the armor’s weight, but had apparently soldered the heavy weave back together. The cushioning around his control box hadn’t been touched.

Vader’s own troops may not have blinked at the damage––Vader regularly came in with mangled armor––but Tarkin would notice the difference of his limbs and new panelling and switches on the box, and report to the Emperor.

That could not happen.

The descending arms from his pressurized chamber fetched the helmet and armor; padding, gloves, gauntlets, and grieves; but Vader stopped the process with a flick of the Force before it could remove his new limbs.

For once, he wished he had a mirror in the pod. Not to see his charred flesh, no, that was an old sight––but what was new was that he could twist, now––barely but there _enough––_ creaking open unused muscles and bones, and didn’t even need to shield himself from the pain with the Force.

The exoskeleton had been removed, as well as the bulge of his control box. Once his armor was off, his shoulders and back were bare and completely free on anything but flesh.

His new limbs no longer yanked and pulled downward on the old stumps of the bone they were connected to: his upper body, the muscles he had built with so much strength to bear the weight of the armor, now lifted his arms with more than ease. They felt barely there, or maybe like they  _should_ be there, and it was awakening long-forgotten memories of his flesh body.

The stumps themselves Lars had bound expertly to protect from the rub of the newly-installed port, both on his legs and arms. The gauze and cotton Vader was almost surprised to see: that was more luxury on Tatooine. It was nearly unheard of.

The wires beneath the limbs were so neat and streamlined, a bare dozen bound and unobtrusive underneath his skeletal bones, Vader idly wondered whether or not Lars was in fact on the run from Roche Foundation, which would beg to give him a galactic prize for revolutionized medical engineering.

If Vader ignored the sight of the control box and the jut of his metal lung from his chest cavity, it was almost like a real body.

There was a spark of––of something, in him. Wonder, maybe––but Vader shielded himself from that quickly. He had more important things to do.

Before the droids could begin to attach his armor, Vader was nearly overwhelmed with the realization that he could mostly dress himself. He still could not bend at the waist without crushing his own vitals, but he could easily slip on the top half of his own padding, and even assemble the gauntlets and gloves himself. His new hands were dexterous and _strong_ , despite their unique nature; they held the heavy, laden weight of his armor without a problem.

The rest of the suit assembled around him easily, hiding the new nature of his attachments. He even slid the outside of a replacement control box panel to hid the new sequencing Lars had fitted in. But the second the breastplate and pauldrons went on, Vader felt it again: the suffocation, the weight, the knowledge that he could not even lift his arms above his head with the additional armor.

Rage battled with good sense as the helmet was fitted over his head and his ocular receptors turned the entire world red. He longed to demand Lars to return, to forge new armor that was as light as his new limbs, to whittle down the control box until it was little more than a button.

And he could _do_ it, Vader knew, he _knew_ Lars had the ability, and he didn’t question it. If Anakin Skywalker could build a protocol droid as a slave in a desert, why couldn’t the boy remake his armor? If Vader had any doubts whether or not he would snap Lars’s neck for the changes, it was gone now. The difference was night and day.

The thought dawned on Vader like new water splitting a dry creekbed: perhaps Lars could do that, too. Maybe Lars could modify his helmet so he could see the difference between the stars and sun once again.

* * *

  _Base One, Yavin IV…_

* * *

When Obi-Wan saw Mon Mothma’s face, older and lined, it didn’t occur to him that it wasn’t a dream. He looked, instinctively, for Padmé but saw only Leia and that was how a bittersweet dream rushed into a sweeter nightmare.

“Obi-Wan,” gasped Mon, clasping their hands together, “We heard from Bail––and then Alderaan––we thought––“

Obi-Wan blinked, surprised, before he realized that Mon was relieved to see him alive. He didn’t think anyone had been relieved to see him, alive or dead, in nearly twenty years.

“I’m here,” Obi-Wan assured, “and so is the princess.”

He didn’t add that Leia Organa was more important than ever. Maybe because she was the only person in the galaxy Obi-Wan had left, or maybe because she was the only hope the galaxy had left.

Mon’s gaze searched over his worn, craggy face. Obi-Wan had long stopped mourning his past good looks, but that wasn’t what Mon was looking for.

“I’m sorry to ask this of you,” she said, “but the preliminary scans of the Death Star have just come in. And it’s going to be a shot in the dark to take that monster down.”

No.

“Please, Master Kenobi,” Mon said––begged. “I remember what you did during the Clone Wars––“

“So you’ll remember that was Anakin, not I,” Obi-Wan interrupted, and the name felt like acid on his tongue. Across the room, Leia looked up curiously. “I am no pilot.”

“But you are a Jedi,” Mon said. “And it is a Jedi we need.”

* * *

  _Battle Station DS-1…_

* * *

The room went quiet when Vader strode in, which was a common response. What was not common was the surprise across the senior staff’s faces.

“Ah, Lord Vader,” said Tarkin, sounding pleasantly taken aback. “We received a message from Admiral Montferrat that you went down.”

“I did not stay down,” Vader rumbled. Obviously. “What is the status of the plans? And the princess?”

“That is what happens when you insist on dogfighting with the troops,” Tarkin continued, ignoring Vader. Vader bristled at the chiding, but said nothing. “But I am pleased to see you were recovered. You may be in a TIE soon again. The princess is on her way to Yavin IV in a cargo ship.”

“She escaped?” Vader asked, shades away from scathing. There should be nowhere to escape _to_ on an orbital battlestation.

“Purposely,” Tarkin insisted, voice icy and the Force breaking like shattered glass with his irritation. “A tracker has been installed in the ship.”

Clearly Tarkin had failed to get any information from Princess Organa. Still, it wasn’t a poor plan.

“We will be beginning our approach to Yavin IV, where we will destroy the Rebellion once and for all,” Tarkin promised, pale lips curving up in something not even Darth Vader would call a smile.

That was worrying.

“I will return to the _Devastator_ and follow with the fleet,” announced Vader in a show of initiative that surprised Tarkin, and displeased him. No doubt he wanted this to be an overwhelming victory for him and his machine, no fleet involved.

But Vader’s modified TIE was being prepared on the _Devastator,_ and there was no way he would be able to shuttle it aboard the Death Star without arousing suspicions. Besides, Lars was a decent engineer and Vader was mentally assembling a list of projects a mile long for him to start working on. If all went to plan and the Death Star blew, but Lars was on it, it would be a complete waste.

“That should not be necessary,” Tarkin informed him. _Ordered_ him, more like. Darth Vader took orders from one master and it was time Tarkin realized that he complied, not followed.

“By this time, the Rebels have no doubt decoded the plans and know the Death Star’s hyperspace capabilities,” Vader said. “They will be evacuating, and the fleet can intercept the survivors.”

Tarkin’s lips thinned in dissatisfaction, but the Force was thrumming with his eagerness. He cared more for the destruction than he cared if Vader happened along on the _Devastator_ for the jump.

“Very well,” he dismissed, impatient, but it truly didn’t make a difference. Vader would have followed anyway. “The _Devastator_ and its armada will meet us at Yavin IV. We jump in a standard hour.”

* * *

  _Yavin IV…_

* * *

 Was this what Padmé felt? Obi-Wan wondered. When he held her hand through the throes of labor and she sobbed from pain and something deeper, was it that she knew nothing was left, not even her Republic?

He was not Anakin. He could not land half a battlecruiser in Coruscant. He was not Padmé, either, who could turn tides of galactic politics with a single speech.

He didn’t even think he was General Kenobi, anymore, who could broker peace and calm wars like catching flies in honey.

But he was a Jedi, and he had been a Knight, so he would fly his last.

* * *

 The  _Devastator…_

* * *

 True to his word, Lars’s modifications were done by the end of the hyperspace jump and the ship was moved from his personal hangar up to the Black Squadron’s hangar. Vader entered the hangar where the Black Squadron was assembling, an engineer at the console of each TIE fighter, running preflight checks.

It was easy to pick out Lars, mostly because he sitting atop Vader’s TIE Advanced. The other engineers were at least competent enough to busy themselves and the Black Squadron pilots knew better than to question Vader. However, the couriers and servicemen were scurrying around him, caught between horrified and fascinated, the Force informed him.

Lars hadn’t changed into a uniform, either. He was still in his dusty desert gear, tied off at the waist and singlet revealed, completely against regulations; if that wasn’t bad enough, sand was spraying down on the floor whenever he moved.

“Chief Engineer,” he called as he strode up. “Prepare my ship for takeoff.”

Lars looked up from what he messing with––straightening out one of the panels; non-essential business, Vader was pleased to note––and naturally scowled at the sight of him. Still, he leapt down and over to the console, where he pulled up and ran through the preliminaries in record time.

“Is it ready?” Vader demanded as he readied himself in the cockpit. Lars climbed half-way up the ladder, just outside the cockpit, a mobile calibration box in his hands as he checked the readings between Vader’s TIE and the console on the hangar floor.

“I pulled the torpedoes from my X-wing.” Vader watched as Lars kept his eyes on the dashboard, hands still busied. His voice was neutral and easily disguised by the clamor of the hangar. “They’re installed behind the laser cannons. You have one shot. Pull to the left straight after. When it goes off, it’ll blow the left wing, knocking you out of your flight path like you were hit from behind.”

Vader nodded, satisfied. His blood thrummed, anticipating the hunt. He had done well selecting Lars. The man had thought it through, and his Force presence held steady, unconcerned, the usual drag of heavy smog weighing down his presence and keeping it anchored.

“Prepare for the seal,” Lars called, stepping down and away. At Lars’s command, Vader’s hatch closed, and the rest of the squadron moved in quick succession. The support staff moved out and away from the hangar into protective banks, and last to go was Lars, who went sprinting for cover, as Vader pushed the TIE into a hover when the magnetic clamps released.

The shield opened the hangar to space, and Vader blasted out, the Black Squadron fanning out in formation about him. He barely paid attention to the men sounding off, trusting the Force to keep track, before ordering the formation. The squadron pulled in seamlessly into a vertical cross as they left the shadow of the  _Devastator._

For a moment, Vader simply breathed in. He hadn’t realized the haze of Lars’s Force presence hung so heavily off him, distracted as he was by his own pain under Lars’s modifications, until the shroud slipped off of him. Finally, finally, he could stretch and reach out beyond the horizon, feel the milling of a million souls aboard the Death Star and the thousands down below on Yavin.

And the furious rush of the X-wings moving to swarm the Death Star.

“Gun it,” Vader ordered, and the Black Squadron obeyed, pushing the speed of the TIEs to scream as they moved to engage the X-wings. They broke formation quickly, but perfectly, each pair of wingmen taking the X-wings on two at a time.

Vader’s wingman, Sigma One, was used to Vader’s pace and kept to him strictly. It was getting more and more difficult to lose Sigma One in the traffic––Vader took down three X-wings in as many shots as he flew a tight ring around a Rebel Squadron, herding them into it––which was a shame, because Vader didn’t terribly want to take the man down under friendly fire so he could proceed to the Death Star.

Vader loosed himself into the Force. He would find answers there.

Four. Five. Vader didn’t keep track of how many kills he kept, but the Force marked their deaths with a quiet shiver that felt cold even in the dead of space.

Vader moved in and out, carefully situated himself closer and closer the trench run the Rebels were moving for, desperately, and he was inches following another X-wing into the trench––he needed to end this  _soon,_ the kill was _his,_ and it was _waiting_ for him, Vader could taste the blood in his mouth––when suddenly the Rebels parted.

Vader threw his craft to the side, surprised; did they have a picked pilot––? It didn’t matter, and as Vader cut a switchback upsidedown to follow the craft––in fact, it would be better, he would follow the starfighter down the trench and take him out and the Death Star with one blow, when––

––he breathed in, or the mask breathed for him––but the Force––it was like inhaling the spray of the sea, the calm before the storm, the deep well waiting within––

––it was––

–– _K E N O B I––_

It  _burned._ It burned, all over again, like Mustafar, and Vader let out a sound through the mask that could have been a scream as he angled toward the X-wing, abandoning all shields and lasers just to reach the ship, almost, _almost there––_

At the last minute, the X-wing yanked up and away, and Vader begged to reach it, with the TIE and the Force, he reached and pulled, scrabbling with the Force to pull it in, and Kenobi’s Force presence screeched against his like sabers slamming and scraping against each other, and screams were ringing in his ears––not his own, no, not Kenobi’s, but he realized dimly it was the squadron––but over was something else––

He and Kenobi tore at each other, fighting for every inch of space to shred and stab at their starfighters, and Vader’s rage was eating him  _alive,_ burning up through his throat and eyes like the ash of Mustafar, because he was the better pilot, he was the master, he was the _skywalker_ _––_ how could Kenobi dare to challenge him, to crawl out of his hole and think that he would _better_ Vader like he had done on Mustafar?

It grated, sharp teeth gnawing on his still-open wounds, that the two of them duelled and moved in sync, and the twenty years fell away before the Force as Vader yanked and Kenobi pulled, mauling and savaging at each, and Vader couldn’t even see the ship for his pure wrath that dripped poison through his veins, and Vader prayed to Force: _let him FEEL this PAIN––_

and he heard, at once; it felt like he was eighteen and Obi-Wan was scolding him to pay attention in literature––their bond snapped back into place, like the wrench of dislocated shoulder back into its socket––

–– _HAVEN’T YOU TAKEN ENOUGH?_

NEVER!––Vader snarled back, and the two of them went tumbling down and barely catching themselves before the trench, climbing back up to claw and tear and when would Obi-Wan _bleed_ like  _he_ had––YOU TOOK––YOU TOOK _EVERYTHING––_

 _NO!_ Obi-Wan’s voice roared and rattled in his head––and, suddenly, he was no longer hovering over the Death Star––

––it was Tatooine.

Tatooine, against the backdrop of the two setting suns and the three rising moons, his mother’s last home huddling underneath the dunes. And towards him ran, blue-eyed and blond curls, wide smile and the Force electrifying around him, not even five–– _Anakin’s son,_ Obi-Wan’s voice whispered, from years ago––

––Vader  _screamed_ ––

YOU TOOK––

––but now, Obi-Wan struggled desperately scrabbled, trying to take back the memory, mind seizing with the force of it, but Vader seized it tight and roared–– _YOU DARE_

and his vision was gone, it was Tatooine again, and smoldering corpses on a pyre, and the boy, the––Obi-Wan’s dug in, ripping, _ripping_ the rest of the memories from his mind before they could cross Vader’s and all he saw was the boy, years older now and screaming, crying, the Force shuddering and spinning out around him, air smoldering with power–– _Anakin's son, Anakin's son_ _––_ taking the name from him like he took the boy, _the child,_ his and Padmé’s child, who lived, who lived, who _lived,_ and Obi-Wan stole him and––

––YOU KILLED HIM, VADER, PADMÉ’S CHILD IS DEAD, LONG DEAD, D E A D––

–– _NO NO NO NO NO YOU TOOK HIM HE IS NOT DEAD YOU TOOK HIM HE LIVES_ _LIAR LIAR LIAR MY CHILD HE LIVES––_

Kenobi strung out his mind, ripping and tearing and aching as he hacked apart the bond, Vader screaming and stretching, begging the Force to drag him back, to _give_ him Kenobi and make him talk, about his child, about the child he took and hid and––

–-and the Force shrieking, bawling at him, and he dove, suddenly back in the cockpit, moving aside as a cargo ship barrelled out of nowhere, the shots missing him by inches as he took back down into the trench for cover and that was the Death Star, his master’s pet, his master, who had _lied_ to him about his child––

––he pulled the trigger, and tasted iron on his lips for the kill as a million men screamed and died and, just like his mechanic promised, the TIE was spinning off with a fantastic kick into space, the Death Star exploding and Kenobi escaping before his eyes.

It was over.

 _Anakin’s son,_ the echo of Kenobi’s own memory whispered in his ear.

Vader tasted blood. It took everything in him not to destroy the TIE and he with it.

Anakin's son. _Skywalker_.

It wasn’t over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo, that was a doozy, wasn't it? where will vader go from here, and obi-wan, too, now that he's escaped a new hope alive? and luke's having a hell of a first day at work, right? wow, guys! that's it for "six hours," the first installation one of "three two one boom"! installation two's first chapter, a direct sequel to this, will be up hopefully before the new year. that's all in luke's point of view, as far as i've planned. see ya then! until then, feel free to follow me and hmu on tumblr @sheepfulsheepyardinspace. thank you all for all the kind reviews! :D

**Author's Note:**

> hello, friends! usually i waste hours waxing poetic about how i'm gonna upload something, yessiree, only once i finish it! well, i banged out chapter one in three hours so let me know if there are any typos and we'll see where we go from here. blame, uh, peer pressure?


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